Crazy
by FortunasFollower
Summary: Life of Harleen, and the choices it made for her. R&R please


She's crazy, they always said to me.

When I was little, I liked to see my parents playing card games. They would laugh at one moment, get serious at another and always try to outsmart each other. It was much different than dolls, who were stationary.

That was REAL. And I loved it. So I asked if I could join.

My mother said I was crazy. My dad, on the other hand, said it was great to learn new things, and that we should always try to expand our horizons. It would be about 6 months before I would begin beating them. I've always been a fast learner.

As I grew up, my parents always asked which career I would follow, and it wouldn't be until my graduation that my opinion would finally be formed. Before that, there the usual phases: princess, teacher, mom and neurosurgeon.

That last option had all my family and friends thinking I was crazy. Well, almost all. My father was always there to be my support.

The neurosurgeon phase was quite different for me. I got hooked on a TV show that had a doctor as a protagonist. Maybe I liked it because of the attention he received, and all the praise it came with the job. Maybe it was because he knew how to interpret people, and that was amazing for me. Maybe it was because he was a TV crush.

Either way, I went through school thinking that I wanted to be a doctor, and had my father not died, that might've been it for me.

His death was a major shock for all of us, but my mom took it the hardest. They were a inseparable, high school sweethearts kind of couple, the one not even Disney can imitate. Having him ripped from her life was too much and she lost it. She screamed at God, she screamed at my relatives and she screamed one particular thing to me.

"Why would someone take his life? He was an angel!", I heard her say. "Someone that heartless can't be human. Beware not of the monsters under you bed, but of the ones hiding in plain sight".

To this day, I don't have an answer for that, mainly because I agree.

Her condition spiralled out of control, and she was entered in a mental hospital. I couldn't bear to see the person who raised me in that condition, so I switched my focus from neuroscience to psychiatry. That way I would help her and who knows, maybe even cure her. So I studied like there was no tomorrow, I shut down all my social life and centered my life just for that.

I passed with flying colors, top of the class. I was even headhunted for a few clinics, but I had a goal and was not going to be sidetracked.

My mom was more important than any sum of money, and I would have to be crazy to let her alone. Fortunately, I wasn't.  
I managed to get a job where she was, but only then they told me that I couldn't "treat" my mom. I was devastated, only being able to see her suffering while a different psychiatrist was with her. Nancy was her name, if I'm not mistaken. Cold hearted and arrogant, she was proof that tests can make you graduate, but it doesn't make you a professional.

Beware of the monsters in plain sight, I remembered. I just never thought one would appear for me.

That bitch kept on just turning a blind eye to my mom, never caring how it affected her. Every day I longed to speak my mind to her, but every day I went against it. If I gave in and just acted based on my emotion, I know the results would have been catastrophic for both my career and my life.

I had graduated already, but as a teacher of mine always said: our actions revolve basically around three things, Logos(logic), Ethos(ethics) and Pathos(emotion). If we give in too much or too little to one, the others become unbalanced. And balance is the key.

So I waited, I gritted my teeth and said nothing. Occasionally, I would put a bad word of her, but nothing too drastic. If she were to be fired, who knows which kind of people they would hire. If Nancy was eligible, than nothing was really discarded.

This went on for a couple of years, until Nancy resigned. Something about having am opening at a new place called "Arkham". I felt relieved and afraid then, but at least her days of tormenting my mom were over.

I was wrong.

Three days after Nancy's resign, my mom killed herself. She couldn't resist losing yet another person she got attached. See, she had acquired some kind of obsession, bordering Stockholm Syndrome to me, and her leaving without a word triggered a chain reaction of emotional destruction.  
I failed her. I must have been imagining things when I thought some miracle would appear and save her. Simply put, I was feeling like everyone else always said I was.

Crazy.

After her funeral, I mourned for quite some time. Five years, to be exact. I couldn't shake the feeling of failure off of me, and the regret and guilt ate me from the inside. I lost weight, lost friends and almost lost my job.

Nothing seemed to work anymore, not that I cared. All I wanted was my parents alive, the one thing I couldn't reach was my deepest desire.

I got transferred to Arkham after I took a leave from work for the third consecutive week. Apparently, they were needing some help with the inmates and young talents were being called in.

Great, now my craziness will blend in nicely.

I worked with a few inmates, not the supervillains though, they were for pros only. I ended up liking this place, I was doing progress and finally feeling like I was truly helping someone put their life back on the rails. I even got promoted after a couple of months!

I was unstoppable, and even got a reputation of "star rookie". So they decided to let me have a talk with one of the big bads.

That's when I met _him_.

I don't know where the attraction began. Our first consult was pretty normal, I tried talking to him, he just stared up to the ceiling.

On the second, he made a few snide remarks about the "bat lunatic" that put him there.

On the third, he finally looked at me, and then all went to hell.

When he asked me something, I just couldn't help telling him the truth. And he listened, advised and even commented on his past experiences. He was the only one I could talk to now.

And I was fine with having just him.

I began to find his sarcastic comments fun, and he used that to his advantage. I'm not stupid, I know what he was doing. But I didn't care, I just needed to have someone who cared. Truthfully or not.

I began to write stories and theorys to explain his behavior, but never found an answer. To tell you the truth, how could I really believe he was ill? He's been nothing but polite to me, and well, he took an interest to my life. Who else did?

Nancy? No.  
Mom? No.  
Friends? No. Not that I had one.  
Colleagues? Not at all.

So who did, then?

 _Him_. The one person who acted as a poster boy for dementia and insanity was the only one who acted human enough.

I asked him that. How could he be the only one that was acting sane?

He said that "every one has a natural mind balance. Psychologists use Logos, Ethos and Pathos. 'Normal' people use apathy, sympathy and comparation. I, on the other hand, use something different."

"What?", I asked him.

"Communication. I don't like to use cheap tricks to test people. Everyone is different, even if a little. Therefore, we can't use the same mechanism for every person. That's just being deliberately idiotic or narcissistic", was his response.

That's logic. That's the most logical thing I've heard in a good while. And he just thrashed a centurys old thesis with it.  
What the hell is he doing here? He could be the most influential politic in Gotham and he is locked with people like the Mad Hatter.

Now that is crazy.

So I decided to right the wrongs society did in locking him up. Yes, he's guilty of every crime he was accused of, but what made him go over the edge? What made him slip from society to just himself?

I'll set him free, and then I'll figure out his problem with the world. Brain teasers were always a hobby of mine since those days playing blackjack with my parents.

So we escaped, and now he is by my side, my very own enigma. The million dollar question.

Yesterday, he asked me what I, as a psychiatrist, thought the word crazy meant. That was an incredibly difficult question.

You see, at first I didn't know what it meant, it was just something said to me. Then, I learned it was a term for mentally deranged people. After that, he took that meaning and broke it to smithereens. So what does being crazy mean? Is it something transitory or is it something ageless?

Today I gave him my answer.

"I have absolutely no idea".

He grinned and nodded.

I don't think we'll ever get what that word means, but I assure you this: my walking Stockholm Syndrome and I will try to figure it out.

After all, weren't the Jokers and Harleys the entertainers in history?


End file.
